Studiomux = personal frustration

I'm about to give up on studiomux because, for the life of me (well, ok, just dozens of hours in total), I cannot get it to work reliably in Windows (10). The VST very rarely works in my DAW (Tracktion Waveform 8 and now 9) - definitely fails to work a lot more than it every actually works. And the developer is largely MIA and is surely busy with other stuff that makes a lot more money in comparison.

I can sometimes get it to work if I load an IAA into a channel. Mostly not.

I thought I then had it figured out to always use AB3 to load an instrument, then load studiomux and then the DAW and that sometimes would work. Mostly not. It usually doesn't even recognize the instrument that was loaded, and even in the rare case it does, it only plays sound in the DAW but once in a blue moon.

I think that my $10 dream to avoid an iconnect device was just that. Bummer. From what I've read online, it sounds like it works pretty well with a Mac.

Is there some secret sauce I'm missing? I truly do wish it would work, but am done spending hour after hour trying to troubleshoot or just get any usable result. Maybe it's studiomux + my DAW, but I don't know how to use any other DAWs anymore (it was Cakewalk before Tracktion) and don't have any others to try.

Thanks!

Comments

Yes I noticed no sound with an IAA instruments but seems better work with the AUv3. I did not look after this issue but I think I will do some others tryes. I am also on Windows. I did not test with AB3. Otherwise I am glad with Studiomux cheaper than Iconnect device. I am using it with Ableton Live.

It works great for me.
I'm using Windows 8.1, Ableton 9, and studio mux from four ipads at the same time, both ways. That is to say midi out to them, and audio back in. I even have effects running on them in Ableton.

Occasionally the laptop, or the ipad gets confused and I have to reboot one or the other. Or the vst crashes, then I just have to restart that.

Win-10 may be today's standard, but less than 1% of the application is DAW focussed.
(meaning at Redmond they don't care much about it)
The audio driver model is less strict than in OSX/IOS, which (together with a wider variance in hardware) introduces more possibilities something goes wrong.

I always admired the way iConnectivity made this work at all, but admittedly I never taxed my system hard in direct coop between IOS and Windows (few needs personally).
But it's a tremedous task of coordination, so I choose the iConnectivity hardware path.

You may give Reaper a shot, as the (unrestricted) demo period is free and it's easy to install. Cakewalk and Tracktion aren't the most reliably benchmark anyway (imho).
Things may depend on your computer's chipset and audio interface, though - so it's trial and error in the end.
You focus on Studiomux (which seems most obvious), but it may as well be just because of a specific environment.

The focus is studiomux because, except for studiomux, everything works flawlessly. It is the core of the problem, in that it doesn't work. I'll try Reaper again just to test compatibility at some point (tried it once but hated using it so it was removed from the computer) and help isolate the issue.

It could well be a problem with your DAW, Traktion Waveform. It only came out last year, so it is still very new. Have you contacted Traktion? As you know Studiomux works flawlessly for me on Win 10/ Ableton , and has done for a couple of years ( except during the update in December 2017 ). Download the free Ableton 10 demo, if Studiomux works for you in this, you will know it is Traktion Waveform, and not your computer or iPad causing the problem. If it doesn't work in the Ableton Demo, you will know that there is something wrong somewhere else in your set-up, not in Traktion Waveform.......

I never had a problem with Studiomux and Windows 10, but I haven't tried the recent version yet. It may be possible that some things don't work as they used to. The DAW software may play a role, in my case I only used Harrison Mixbus and Ableton Live. Also, the drivers for the audio card should be stable.

Installing Reaper and Ableton demos now/soon. It's possible the focusrite drivers are an issue, but they otherwise function, and a new interface is not in the cards any time soon (I wish!). I'll give those a spin as soon as I can figure out how to use them well enough to do so and post back later today with the results. Thanks for the sanity check

Good Luck! The Focusrite drivers should be O.K. i have used Studiomux with the 18i20 (First Gen ) without issues. It wouldn't do any harm to un-install, re-install, the drivers, just to be sure though. Download them again from the Focusrite site to be sure they are the latest, and uncorrupted...........

OK. Reaper didn't work for me (I think I set it up right). Ableton is in the wings - haven't installed it yet. But in the mean time, I cleaned and reinstalled the Focusrite drivers for my "ancient" 1st gen 8i6 - and, at least for the moment, studiomux is working for me in Waveform. This is very strange, since every other audio application/use has had zero issues with the way that it was. I mean, truly working great as it was, except for studiomux. More experimenting ahead....

iConnectivity user here. I was intrigued when MusicIO came out offering a similar capability for a few dollars. Had wonky experience. Then I tried Studiomux and had much better success. But then... (I should point out I'm a Mac user) OS 10.13 added audio and MIDI over USB functionality so in the end I didn't need any of them! I hope that Windows 10 follows suit and builds this functionality into its OS (although it's sad for the 3rd-party hardware/software developers who brought the idea to market).

Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

quietly returns studiomux to the dust bin

Same as you, any solution? It used to work fine...

The only solution is to move on to something that works. In my case: either analog out via dongle or, with more fuss, digital via IDAM to my MBP and then digital out from the MBP to the digital in on my Focusrite 6i6. Even the latter is still easier than spending time trying to get studiomux to work and not crash (back when the server part worked on my PC).

I've since deleted the app from my PC and iPhone and haven't thought about it again until now. 😀

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

quietly returns studiomux to the dust bin

Same as you, any solution? It used to work fine...

The only solution is to move on to something that works. In my case: either analog out via dongle or, with more fuss, digital via IDAM to my MBP and then digital out from the MBP to the digital in on my Focusrite 6i6. Even the latter is still easier than spending time trying to get studiomux to work and not crash (back when the server part worked on my PC).

I've since deleted the app from my PC and iPhone and haven't thought about it again until now. 😀

I gave it another go on my latest 2017 ipad, latest OS and was delighted to find it running smooth out of the gate on my Windows 8 laptop. Then after a few hours it was like the last time, inexplicably dead in the water with a difficult recovery. Analog for the win. One day, when I am stupid rich from lottery spoils, I will get a Mac and use the lightning method. Err, or USB-Z or whatever it is by then.

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

quietly returns studiomux to the dust bin

Same as you, any solution? It used to work fine...

The only solution is to move on to something that works. In my case: either analog out via dongle or, with more fuss, digital via IDAM to my MBP and then digital out from the MBP to the digital in on my Focusrite 6i6. Even the latter is still easier than spending time trying to get studiomux to work and not crash (back when the server part worked on my PC).

I've since deleted the app from my PC and iPhone and haven't thought about it again until now. 😀

I gave it another go on my latest 2017 ipad, latest OS and was delighted to find it running smooth out of the gate on my Windows 8 laptop. Then after a few hours it was like the last time, inexplicably dead in the water with a difficult recovery. Analog for the win. One day, when I am stupid rich from lottery spoils, I will get a Mac and use the lightning method. Err, or USB-Z or whatever it is by then.

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

quietly returns studiomux to the dust bin

Same as you, any solution? It used to work fine...

The only solution is to move on to something that works. In my case: either analog out via dongle or, with more fuss, digital via IDAM to my MBP and then digital out from the MBP to the digital in on my Focusrite 6i6. Even the latter is still easier than spending time trying to get studiomux to work and not crash (back when the server part worked on my PC).

I've since deleted the app from my PC and iPhone and haven't thought about it again until now. 😀

I gave it another go on my latest 2017 ipad, latest OS and was delighted to find it running smooth out of the gate on my Windows 8 laptop. Then after a few hours it was like the last time, inexplicably dead in the water with a difficult recovery. Analog for the win. One day, when I am stupid rich from lottery spoils, I will get a Mac and use the lightning method. Err, or USB-Z or whatever it is by then.

Or. Get an ica4+. No lottery winnings or Mac needed lol.

I already have two Duo Captures that I use for at home and it works great, nice and flexible. For the train though a little macbook with one lightning cable into the ipad would be nice, but then if I win the lotto why the hell am I still taking the train? That is the part I didn’t think through,

What's the best way to get multi-channel audio from the iPad to the laptop? As in like how studiomux would work; with 8 channels, like ADAT? The fact that it was able to do that via software alone means I shouldn't need to buy hardware to do it. I've scanned the interfaces for ios but only a couple of the higher end interfaces provide that multi-channel out. With studiomux you got that functionality for practically free (relatively). Was that the only software that could do that?

While it looks functionally very similiar an Adat connection is quite different.
It provides 8 sample-synced channels of audio between 2 devices and a full roundtrip (send-receive-return to sourcs) only takes about 0.5 ms.
This is preferred in studio situations where you want to send the signal of several microphones or return multiple fx units in parallel - the crucial part is that all channels are perfectly in line without a single sample deviation.

If you want to transfer (say) the stereo output from 4 different apps to your PC or Mac, such perfect alignement is hardly (if ever) required.
Studiomux is a nice solution (dunno if it works as advertized) in that case, even more if you consider an Adat connection requires 2 interfaces (one for source, one for destination).
Studiomux requires an additional helper app on the Mac (if the Mac receives) because of Apple's protocl design.

Bottomline: Adat can be used for the task, but is way too expensive in most cases.
It's strong with parallel signals that require absolute phase lock across all channels, something studiomux is unlikely to provide (imho).

@vitocorleone123 said:
Gotta try stuffs every once in awhile. I dusted off studiomux and.... the console/server won't even stay started in Windows 10 now for some reason. I go to select it in the system tray and it vanishes.

quietly returns studiomux to the dust bin

Same as you, any solution? It used to work fine...

I was having the same problem with studiomux vanishing from the system tray but seem to have solved it by reinstalling iTunes on my laptop. I think studiomux looks for the Apple mobile device service which I must have deleted at some point.

Download and install the app and server and make sure to deinstall previous versions of midimux and audiomux.

Once the server is installed and the mac has been restarted, a new icon will appear in the system tray.
The context menu displays the currently available and connected iOS devices and the status of the audio device.
On Mac OSX 10.8+ you can load or unload the audio device by clicking load/unload audio device.
Each status change requires an admin password entry.
You may quit the server by clicking quit and restart it – whenever you need it – from the Applications folder.

Connect iOS device and mac via usb cable.

Windows

Before installing studiomux please make sure, that you have installed the NET Framework 4.5 or higher and iTunes for Windows. Make sure not to install iTunes from the Windows Store. If you don't want to install iTunes, please follow the guide at Copytrans.

Download and install app and server. Once the server is installed, a new icon appears in the system tray.

The vsts are not installed by default. please right-click the studiomux-icon in the taskbar and select ‘Install 64-Bit VSTs’ or ‘Install 32-Bit VSTs’ depending on your current Windows version.

Thereafter, please point your DAW to this folder, or directly install into the DAWs favorite VST directory. if you want to install the VSTs after the first install please make sure to start the server with administrator permissions. also make sure, that the colour depth of your video cards driver is set to 32bit. otherwise the VSTs GUI is not displayed correctly.

The context menu allows to claim and unclaim virtual MIDI ports and to quit the server. midimux doesn’t claim any ports by default. If you want to control an App with an external MIDI controller connected to your PC, you have to claim these ports via the midimux context menu. Thereafter they appear in the midimux GUI. The context menu doesn’t display local ports of your iOS device, since they cannot be claimed by the midimux app.

Hey, wow! It was the mobile service. That seemed to be the key. Never would've guessed that it was reliant on iTunes. Now, if only I could get it to sound normal and not crappy.... Well. It took over a year to have it working again, maybe it'll take me another year to get it to sound ok!